Can you imagine an article like this appearing when Bush was president? No, back then it was considered “patriotic” for the press to disclose classified information, even when the information was incorrect or false, so the idea of the press reflecting on the Bush administration’s “struggles” with issues of free expression was unthinkable. But when Obama wants to stomp on press freedoms for any reason, the press decides to be “reflective” and “philosophical” about the issue. Craven rationalizations for restricting press freedoms under Obama are to be expected. I particularly like this reader’s comment which I saw when I originally read the article: “You are surprised Obama is stepping on the 1st Amendment? He tried to stomp on the 2nd Amendment for over a year now! The only Amendment this Administration seems to think is important is the 5th Amendment so they can hide behind it.”

Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Senator Dick Durbin whether Barack Obama’s promise to have Eric Holder look into cases of abuse that he personally approved represents a conflict of interest, but Durbin dodges that question and talks instead about the shield law proposed repeatedly over the last few years as the appropriate Congressional response to the scandal. However, Durbin asks what exactly “freedom of the press” means in 2013, and wonders aloud whether it would include bloggers, Twitter users, and the rest of the Internet media [Video at the link].

Facebook on Tuesday acknowledged that its systems to identify and remove hate speech had not worked effectively, as it faced pressure from feminist groups that want the site to ban pages that glorify violence against women.

The activists, who sent more than 5,000 e-mails to Facebook’s advertisers and elicited more than 60,000 posts on Twitter, also prompted Nissan and more than a dozen smaller companies to say that they would withdraw advertising from the site.

In a blog post, Facebook said its “systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate.” The company said it would review how it dealt with such content, update training for its employees, increase accountability — including requiring that users use their real identities when creating content — and establish more direct lines of communication with women’s groups and other entities.

Never fear, though, misandry and hatred of conservatives will still remain in fashion.

Perhaps the appeal of Twitter is that often pith makes the point better than a well-crafted, thoughtfully argued essay. Last night, Glenn Reynolds, whose Instapundit blog, proudly produces pithy commentary on the events of the day linked this tweet from Ari Fleischer:

Does the left-wing Facebook group which posted this picture realize how accurately it depicts the juvenile attitude the incumbent President of the United States has adopted to his predecessor:

And how the depiction does their man no credit. They may find this funny, but the action they depict reflects poorly on their man in Washington as Jennifer Rubin explains:

There is irony overload in President Obama describing President George W. Bush as “gracious” and “patriotic.” Obama has been among the most ungracious of successors, rising to power by vilifying Bush 43 and blaming four years of economic failure on his predecessor. He has assiduously refused to acknowledge Bush’s accomplishments (e.g. the troop surge). Dubbing his predecessor as “patriotic” is only a compliment in a political universe in which “Bush lied, people died” is taken as gospel. (Does he imagine there is some doubt as to Bush’s patriotism that requires Obama’s stamp of approval?)

(Read the whole thing.) How many other presidents whined about the problems they “inherited” from their predecessor?

No, Mr. Obama never performed the juvenile stunt depicted in this photoshop. But it does say a lot about liberals who think it funny.

A college classmate recently posted on Facebook about gay marriage. And when I found myself weighing in, I offered a response a bit longer than I had anticipated. It’s organized as are most of my post, more in the form of random thoughts, but since I took some time crafting it, I thought I would share with with you, slightly amended with links added:

As perhaps the only gay person on this thread, I must note that I have long been decidedly ambivalent on gay marriage, in part because many gay marriage advocates seem more interested in winning the culture wars than in promoting the institution and in part because of my studies of myth, psychology and anthropology and the longstanding human recognition of the importance of sex difference. And marriage rituals of every culture (see van Gennep) are based upon bringing together individuals from different groups.

In my grad school paper for my Native American class, I researched the legends of the berdache, or two-spirit. Many cite the berdacge tradition as an example of cultures which accept and embrace homosexuality and same-sex relationships. And while many American Indian tribes recognized same-sex marriages, they all required one partner in such a union to live in the guise of the other sex. Thus, if one man married another man, one would wear men’s clothes and go hunting with the “braves” while the other would have to wear women’s clothes and live as a “squaw.” The one who lived as a woman could not go hunting with his same-sex peers nor could he participate in activities, rituals etc reserved for his biological sex.

Sex difference in short has long been inherent to the notion of marriage.

That said, I believe, states should — at minimum — recognize gay relationships as civil unions. And perhaps the ideal would be for the state to simply call monogamous relationships “civil unions” (for all people) and let churches, synagogues, private individuals, etc. call them marriage — or whatever they want. (more…)

Monday morning, I woke up to an NPR summary of the latest Pew “State of the Media Study.” Even in my half-awake state, what I heard seemed like the musings of leftists trying to explain why their favorite program is failing to accomplish anything worthwhile. So when I got a chance, I decided to look into the matter further, and then I came across this article at the Huffington Post. The headline there tells us all we need to know about the insularity of the folks who worked on the Pew media study. It reads, “Pew State Of The Media Study: Journalism Cutbacks Are Driving Consumers Away.”

Let’s examine the opening paragraphs of the Huffington Post article in more detail. The story begins:

Years of newsroom cutbacks have had a demonstrable impact on the quality of digital, newspaper and television news and in how consumers view that work, a study released Monday found.

Nearly one-third of consumers surveyed by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism said they have abandoned a news outlet because it no longer gave them what they had counted on, either with fewer or less complete stories.

Pew’s annual State of the News Media report delivered what has become a common litany of grim business statistics. Television news viewership is down. Newsroom employment at newspapers is down 30 percent since a peak in 2000 and has gone below 40,000 people for the first time since 1978. Newsweek shut its print edition and Time magazine is cutting staff.

“These cutbacks are real,” said Amy Mitchell, the project’s acting director. “And based on the data that we’ve collected, they are having an effect.”

Government coverage on local television news has been cut in half since 2005, the study said. Sports, weather and traffic now account for 40 percent of the content on these broadcasts; yet that’s just the sort of information readily available elsewhere. That’s a recipe for future erosion, Mitchell said.

So if we believe Pew, the media are failing primarily because of “newsroom cutbacks,” and that has put the media into a vicious cycle of shortages and decline. Evidently, none of the folks at Pew thought to ask what caused the “newsroom cutbacks” in the first place.

Here’s a hint: it wasn’t simply the economy. Decades of biased coverage, selective reporting, agenda-driven campaigns, and the refusal to hold corrupt and cynical politicians accountable have taken their toll. People aren’t buying what the press is trying to sell. When was the last time anyone in the lamestream press asked an entrenched politician questions like these?

Lest you think I’m being too harsh on the insularity of the folks who worked on the Pew study, consider these additional facts. It came as news to them that MSNBC is “almost entirely dominated by opinion.” One wonders where they have been hiding during the last eight years.

Yet somehow, the folks at Pew somehow still want us to believe that viewers and readers are tuning out the media because cutbacks are placing limits on the ability of the press to cover stories adequately.

Conservative and libertarian pundits have compared the increasing centralization of power in Washington, D.C. along with the concomitant growth in the city’s wealth (particularly compared to the rest of the country) with that of the Capitol of Panem, the brave new nation, in the Hunger Games universe. The nation’s wealth flows into the city and power flows out from it.

Is is just me — or are others noticing that their left-of-center Facebook friends are still posting more links (and commentary) critical of Republicans (and conservatives) than they are posting pieces praising the reelected president and promoting his second-term agenda?

How quick some were to pounce on General Powell’s suggestion about dark undercurrents of racism in the GOP. (They didn’t bother to come up with facts backing up their assertion — and ignored the fact that most Republicans seem pleased the the nation’s only Indian-American woman governor appointed a black man to serve in the United States Senate. And when you provide examples of Democrats saying similar things to those Republican statements Powell singled out, well, it comes time to insist that Republicans really, really are racist.)

One friend just linked something from an outfit called Americans Against the Tea Party. Is it that those folks define themselves not by what they’re for, but by their against?

FROM THE COMMENTS: David wonders at the ability of the media to craft a narrative about natural disasters:

It’s more than a little bit scary when you recognize the ability of the MSM to influence the perceptions of Americans as to the truth of what is going on. Before Katrina hit Navy and Coast Guard ships positioned off the coast, MREs and water were stockpiled in the Superdome, FEMA positioned medical teams and specialized personnel outside New Orleans, and aircraft were positioned to assess damage and carry out rescues. After the storm hit the responders carried out the largest post-war air rescue ever. A constant stream of helicopters ferried survivors out of flooded areas to safety. And yet the meme that Katrina was a failure of leadership saturated the news and talk shows for months. It was a politically motivated false narrative then just like the Sandy narrative now.

If Obama has been president in 2005, then we might certainly have learned of all the preparatory work that FEMA, the National Guard and the Coast Guard had done.

in our society, we are inundated with unwanted solicitations. Yesterday, for example, except for a magazine, every piece of snail mail I received was a solicitation for a charity, only one of which (to the best of my recollection) I have ever supported.

Every morning, it seems there are at least 20 unsolicited offers/advertisements in my e-mail, then it’s the Pop-ups. I really should use Firefox more often as that web browser is better at blocking them, but our GayPatriot dashboard is easier to use on Safari.

Lately, those pop-up advertisements have been proliferating, sometimes slowing the browser, other times just cluttering the desk top. And now, they’re piling pop-ups on top of pop-ups. Take a gander at the pop-up I received when trying to close the window for a pop-up advertisement:

This ad will make not make it any more likely that I’ll respond to their offer.

When I listend to the audio version of Ronald C. White’s biography of Abraham Lincoln, I saw that learned that his successors in the 1930s and the 1980s, the first Republican president understood the impact of new media. He was aware of the growing influence of newspapers and did what he could to earn favorable coverage.

In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used radio to get his message across. And erstwhile actor Ronald Reagan understood the importance of TV.

Now, a less capable executive than those three men has once again found electoral success using the new media of his day.

When on Monday, while doing cardio, I saw both presidential candidates on television, it was easy to tell which one was more presidential. Mitt Romney look confident and commanding, Obama insecure and angry. Yet, the one who looked like a winner lost and the one who came across as a loser won.

Only as I read about how team Obama brilliantly used the internet and social networking to “micro-target” their supporters did I realize how much less significant were those televised.

Something else struck me as well; if it were not for the insane amount of cardio I do at the gym, I would get almost no news from television. Other people at gym are reading books on their Kindles or watching movies and surfing the web on their iPads. Perhaps, some are Facebook. And perhaps like them, I get most of my news now from the Internet.

Seeing how Romney and Obama looked and acted, a good number of us thought that the Republican was headed to victory and the Democrat to defeat. But, we underestimated that the impact of new media. But, the Obama campaign did not; Democrats this year were far better at exploiting it to get their voters to the polls.

Last night on Facebook, was chatting with our reader AZ Mo in NY as the sex story that Drudge had been hyping came out. I told him about the story and after skimming the article, said that there didn’t appear to be much there there. The Senator was divorced at the time. Our reader disagreed, thinking there was more to the story; he remind me that the Democrat had solicited these prostitutes, but failed to pay for their services.

I suggested then that he write up his remarks as a guest post. The following words are his, not mine. So, is he right, is there more to the story that a Senator failing to pay for services he solicited? –Dan

The party that lays claim to burning the brightest moral torch when it comes to caring for the poor and fighting for women’s rights has fired the latest shot in the war on women. Matthew Boyle over at the Daily Caller alerts us to Democratic New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez overworking and underpaying third world prostitutes during a previously-undocumented visit to the Dominican Republic. Boyle reports that Menendez promised his prostitutes $500 in exchange for their services, yet only paid them $100.

At the same time he forgot to pay one of the prostitutes the additional $400, he also forgot to tell anyone he was going away for that 2012 Easter weekend, “Menendez’s 2012 public schedule shows no events listed for Easter or the following three days. On Easter Sunday this year, aircraft records obtained by TheDC show that Melgen’s plane left Florida the morning of Easter Sunday, stopped at the Teterboro private airport near Menendez’s home in New Jersey, and flew on to the Dominican Republic.” reports Boyle. Why did that happen?

Why didn’t Menendez, as an advocate for the poor, at the very least pay the prostitutes the full amount he owed them? Why didn’t he offer a helping hand to get them out of a situation where they had to sell their bodies to rich white Democrats? (more…)

Talk to any gay conservative and we will tell you how some (usually just a handful) of his liberal friends stopped talking to us upon learning of our politics. Most are more subtle in their discrimination, like the woman — at an “equality” summit — who quietly left the table where we had both been sitting shortly after I described the nature of this blog.

If you plan to vote for Mitt Romney, you are putting a nail into my civil rights coffin, and I’d rather not have friends who think I deserve anything less than equal treatment under the law. Romney supports DOMA (which directly and negatively impacts me, restricting my partner Russ, our kids, and my federal protections and tax benefits under the law), and has noted his support for an anti-marriage equality amendment as well. While you may see your vote for him as one about the economy (and we can debate who’d be better for that until the cows come home), what you intend by your vote really doesn’t matter. Your vote means that you are supporting someone who not only thinks I’m not equal to you, but who works vigorously to ensure my “less-than” legal status. Your vote for him means that you are totally fine with me being treated with disrespect.

What a prejudiced man, assuming that because we plan to vote for Mitt Romney, we want to treat him with disrespect. Now, to be sure, given his narrow views of Romney supporters, some might well feel inclined to treat him with disrespect, but not, as he implies, because of his sexuality or his relationship, but because of insistence on distancing himself from those who support a good and decent Republican presidential candidate.

Simply put, he doesn’t want to associate with those who support a different presidential candidate than he. How sad. (more…)

Twice in the past twenty-four hours or so, I have received reports via Facebook of gay men coming out for Romney, only to encounter attacks from their gay peers.

People “are surprised”, one wrote, as if writing about my own initial experiences coming out conservative, “when I say I’m a republican. They ask me how I can be a Gay Jew and a republican at the same time.” The other had a “Question for you Dan! Why do LGBT people hate conservative LGBT people … I have so many haters right now!”

Yes, why do they hate?

“Let’s be honest,” the second man wrote

. . . the left doesn’t hate me because I am mean or brash or too aggressive – the same label can be applied to many of my critics. No, the left hates me because I have the audacity to stand up to them. They hate me because I am a conservative who happens to be gay. They hate me because I won’t be bullied by them. They hate me because I have dared to wander off the liberal plantation, because I refuse to play the victim card, and because I have rejected their failed big government, single-issue, tunnel-visioned agenda.”

He concluded, “They hate me because I am a conservative who happens to be gay.”

Upon reading the first draft of this post, the first correspondent disagreed with the language used by the second:

my frieends and I don’t hate each other they just become another person when they find out that I am a Republican. (more…)

As I read coverage of the debate last night on conservative (& libertarian) blogs, a number of things struck me, two from left-of-center pundits, the first, David Gergen, practically the mouthpiece of the D.C. Beltway establishment.

But Romney also had a strong debate, in pursuing different goals than the president. He sought to come across as reasonable rather than confrontational — a candidate comfortable with the campaign’s trajectory.

“Attacking me is not talking about an agenda,” Romney said at one point.

Emphasis added. Snap polls called Obama the winner. He may have “won”, but he didn’t seem to persuade. Conservatives wishing for a knockout punch* (and Chris Matthews) were disappointed that Romney wasn’t more aggressive. But, then he wasn’t trying to appeal to conservatives (or Chris Matthews). “His target audience was,” Paul Mirengoff maintains, “above all, non-partisan voters and females.”

If you knew nothing about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney except what you saw in their final debate, you would have assumed that Romney was the incumbent president, that Obama was the challenger trying to unseat him, that Romney was clearly leading in the polls going in and that he remained there going out. You wouldn’t necessarily think Romney won the debate, but you would think he was winning the race.

Obama apparently came out as quite snide, peevish, condescending and small. He wants to make this election a referendum on the challenger, but since, as Gergen put it, Romney passed the commander-in-chief test, that dog just won’t hunt any more.

We’re stil waiting to hear Obama’s agenda for his second term. Should he win one.

Doing my morning blog-read, found the same article linked on one conservative-leaning web-site (Drudge) and on two conservative/libertarian blogs (Instapundit and Powerline), yet neither AOL nor Yahoo! mentions it. It’s a story with a similar theme to one which surfaced the last time a Democrat ran for reelection and the Washington Post did pick up on it, but a search (without quotation marks for “Obama fundraising web” and “Obama fundraising internet” yields nothing on their site at 9:20 PST (12:20 GayPatriot blog time).

The Obama re-election campaign has accepted at least one foreign donation in violation of the law — and does nothing to check on the provenance of millions of dollars in other contributions, a watchdog group alleges.

Chris Walker, a British citizen who lives outside London, told The Post he was able to make two $5 donations to President Obama’s campaign this month through its Web site while a similar attempt to give Mitt Romney cash was rejected. It is illegal to knowingly solicit or accept money from foreign citizens.

Walker said he used his actual street address in England but entered Arkansas as his state with the Schenectady, NY, ZIP code of 12345.

“When I did Romney’s, the payment got rejected on the grounds that the address on the card did not match the address that I entered,” he said. “Romney’s Web site wanted the code from the back of card. Barack Obama’s didn’t.”(more…)

A couple days ago, Bruce forwarded a tweet where a friend of mine from my DC days praised Bruce thinking he and I were the same person. On Monday, at our LA dinner, one reader who joined us thought I was doing all the GayPatriot tweeting. These are not the first times we’ve been confused.

Earlier today, Bruce alerted me to the change in his “handle” on this blog, he’s now “Bruce – @GayPatriot”. He hopes this will remind people of his twitter ID. So, until I join Twitter, if you see a GayPatriot tweet, it’s Bruce. And when you read posts here, they are more likely to be mine, but a few will be Bruce’s (and a handful Nick’s). Make sure to check the byline.

Although Bruce and I often agree on matters political, we have different ways of expressing ourselves. Neither of us should be held responsible for what the other says. :-)

I assiduously avoid posting political items on my Facebook Wall, seeing the forum as a means to connect/communicate with friends across the ideological spectrum. And I try (not always successfully) to avoid commenting on liberal friends’ political posts. All too few of them (alas) wish to engage my arguments. I’d rather focus on what we have in common.

Sunday evening, left-wing blogress Pam Spaulding reminded me yet again that you can share a passion with a political adversary when she posted on about a YouTube gem she found. When she found the 1965 CBS production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (featuring Lesley Ann Warren in the title role), she recalled watching it “as a child almost every year it aired (when did they stop airing it?).” I know I’ve seen that one, but do have a preference for the Julie Andrewsversion (okay it’s black and white, but, it’s Julie).

It was a nice reminder how certain stories we heard or movies and TV shows we watched as children retain a certain sweetness when we encounter them again as an adult. It’s not just the story they recall, but the impression it made upon us.

This past weekend, a liberal blogress reminded me of that simple truth. Bear that in mind when you prepare to respond to a critic of one of our posts. Or, if you disagree with our posts, bear that in mind as you prepare to express your disagreement.

At least since the dawn of the television era, image matters in politics. In reading reactions to Joe Biden’s performance in last week’s debate, particularly those of women, I have begun to wonder if his boorishness will stick in peoples’ proverbial craws, making it increasingly unlikely that they’ll vote Democratic this fall.

There is now the long, long reverberation in social media, where the basic debate footage serves as raw material for mash-ups and parodies and treatments for the rest of the election cycle and beyond. And Biden’s performance, which won him some tactical advantage in the debate, has set him up as the target for rich satire and a way that Ryan’s conventional performance didn’t and cannot do. His performance is comic gold, and although within hard-core Dem/left circles he will be celebrated as the warrior, everywhere else, and especially for basically apolitical young YouTube viewers, he will be the jackass supreme. I suspect that by Election Day, the various parodic videos will have had a larger viewership than the debate itself. By this criterion, the tactic was a massive miscalculation.

Yesterday, releasing this clever ad, contrasting Obama’s lofty rhetoric with his real record, on Facebook, Rightchange was trying “to reach 160 million adult Facebook users in one day across the country.” (more…)